Boat business

Salman Rashid

‘My family never gave up building boats since they built the ark of Hazrat Nuh!’ Ghulam Arabi did not so much as bat an eyelid making this startling disclosure. Then he went on to tell me that before the time of the prophet who saved mankind from the Deluge, ship-building was unknown. As irrefutable finality of that statement, Ghulam Arabi cited the Quran.

For added authenticity he said even his great-grandfather was a boatwright. I did not point out that between his great-grandfather and Hazrat Nuh there must have been several thousand years. Quick to see the doubt in my eyes, he said that since his family knows only this craft, it has long been suspected that they go back to those biblical times. That was arithmetic at its simplest, and I could hardly quarrel with it. At forty Ghulam Arabi, having learned the trade at his late father’s knee, himself had twenty-five years of boat-building experience.

He said that he was a Mughal and his sub-caste was Gharu. This latter, he said, derived from the Punjabi or Urdu word for shaping wood. I asked him if his family was called Gharu even in the time of Hazrat Nuh and he looked at me as if I could scarcely have asked a more imbecile question. That, then, was settled: he was a Mughal of the sub-caste Gharu whose family history of ship-building went back to the great Deluge. And so we moved on to less exciting but rather more plausible aspects of his profession.

There were thirty-six different kinds of boats in Pakistan. These included the several types of flat-bottomed punts on rivers and lakes that could either be rowed, poled or fitted with outboard motors. Then there were the large sabot-shaped houseboats (different sizes) of the Sindhu River and Manchhar Lake and there were the different types and sizes of keeled sea-going vessels of the coast. Ghulam Arabi, his brother, two sons, a nephew and a maternal uncle who all work together, could build any of those boats. And they were not the only boatwrights of the country. There were a few dozen other families engaged in the craft.

But they never employed drawings or measurements. There was nothing on paper. Ghulam Arabi and his team had everything in their heads. All that was needed was a photograph and the desired length of the boat and they could produce it. Chaudri Munir, a well-known industrialist from Lahore, brought a catalogue of boat designs complete with measurements and drawings to Ghulam Arabi. He wanted a boat copied and had tried several carpenters in Lahore. But nothing worked. After wasting much time and even more money, Munir turned to Ghulam Arabi.

When our man was offered the catalogue to study, he refused. He simply looked at the picture of the boat, asked how big Chaudri sahib wanted his vessel to be and got his team working. In six weeks flat, Ghulam Arabi had the boat ready to the great delight of his rich client.

We were sitting in the sand of the once great Sindhu River at the ford of Bungla Ichha near Jamaldin Wali in Rahim Yar Khan district. Ghulam Arabi, a native of Chachran fifty kilometres upstream, was taking time off from repairing three or four boats that were soon to be hitched in a boat bridge. Every year between November and March when the river runs low, the boat bridge is strung out and all motor traffic passes over it to Rojhan on the west bank.

The rest of the year, the river being far too wide and with a greater flow for this arrangement, crossings are affected by smaller engine-powered punts. Since these can at most carry a couple of motorcycles and are mainly for passengers, vehicular traffic is routed over Guddu Barrage about thirty kilometres downstream.

Business was good, said Ghulam Arabi. The going rate to build a new vessel was six hundred rupees per foot and a typical twenty foot-long punt took about a month to finish. Charges for repair work, on the other hand, were variable depending on the scale of work. All materials, the timber (always deodar cedar), as well as the nails and other items, were supplied by the client. Ghulam Arabi and his team came with the tools of their trade and their expertise.

The typical work day for them began after the morning prayers and ended with sundown. But though the work day was some five hours longer in summer, daily output tended to be the same throughout the year. The reason according to Ghulam Arabi was the debilitating heat of summer that reduced efficiency.

At the fishing village of Ibrahim Hyderi in Karachi, Ghulam Arabi had learned the science of building keeled marine engine-powered boats. Thereafter he had worked there a full eight years to master the craft. Subsequently he moved to Gwadar where he remained another couple of years working with another ustad. He worked at the two places in order to learn the subtle differences between the Baloch and the Sindhi design.

Time was when there were only single-masted sailboats plying the several fords on the Sindhu between Dera Ghazi Khan and Kashmore. Ghulam Arabi and his team built the last of those sailing boats in the later 1990s. Now there are only these small boats with the diesel engine that for some abstruse reason we call a ‘peter engine’ in Pakistan.

‘The sailing boat took five hours to cross the river. These little powered boats take three quarters of an hour. Now everyone is in a hurry and they just want to get wherever they are going.’

Ghulam Arabi said he had no complaints. Business had been brisk and there were still orders in hand for the coming months. I pointed out that one day a bridge will span this part of the river adversely affecting his business. What will he do then?

‘The fishermen of the Sindhi lakes as well as those of the seaboard will never go out of business. If it comes to the worst, we’ll have to move either to Karachi or to Gwadar. But we will carry on the profession we have followed since the time of Hazrat Nuh.’ Ghulam Arabi, the boatwright, was spot on. He and others like him will never run out of work.

Fellow of Royal Geographical Society, Salman Rashid is author of several books including jhelum: City of the Vitasta and The Apricot Road to Yarkand, Riders on the Wind, Between two Burrs on the Map, Prisoner on a Bus and Sea Monsters and the Sun God. His work - explorations, traveling and writings - appears in almost all leading publications.

The ambidextrous wonder from Ghotki

Salman Rashid

I had asked the manager of the dump where I was staying in Sukker and he said it would be no problem locating my man: every tonga wallah, every street urchin would know where to find him. And so I got off the bus at the small town of Ghotki in Upper Sindh and told the tonga driver where to take me.

A short ride; a walk through a narrow street and I was led into a furniture workshop where several men were working. "That's your man," said my guide pointing to a skinny, boyish character squatting on the floor and diligently rubbing away with sandpaper on a piece of woodwork. The man looked up, dusted his hands and came bounding towards me in a barrage of greetings. It seemed he had just been waiting for me. Conscious that he was famous in his own way Kafeel Bhai had, in fact, been waiting for just anybody to come around.

There will be few long haul trucks in the country that do not carry the legend "Kafeel Bhai ko salaam. Mashoor-e-zamana Right arm, left arm spin bowler of Ghotki". When I first noticed this sign in the early eighties I took it as a joke but its pervasiveness was astonishing: every single cross country truck had apparently tarried long enough in Ghotki to have been struck by this "world famous" spin bowler. Having passed several times through the town and never having time enough to stop and investigate I had resolved to check my man out this time. And so it was that I was being hugged by an ebullient Kafeel Bhai who in his own words in the uncrowned king of spin bowling.

A man who can safely get into the Guiness book of World Records if for no other reason then for the speed with which words spill out of his mouth, Kafeel Bhai appears to be the man who has waited too long to tell the world what he had always wanted to tell. Sadly, he had never found it ready to listen and now I with my camera bag was his window to this world that had so far ignored this prodigy. "Tell me everything about yourself," I said. "No, no. You ask, you ask and I'll tell everything. Everything I'll tell you." The following transcript of the recording is devoid of embellishment or corrections; it is Kafeel Bhai as he sees himself and the world around him.

He was born Kafeel Ahmed Siddiqui in 1958 at Ghotki. His father a native of Jhansi (India) is a veteran Muslim Leaguer and, as I was told, a close associate of Mr Jinnah who called him Khalil Ahmed Pakistani in view of his services to the cause of the new nation. After Partition the family migrated to Ghotki where Kafeel went to school which ended with matriculation. Even as a child he possessed remarkable ability with the paint brush. But small town Pakistan was hardly the place to put this artistic talent to good use, moreso since the family was sufficiently well off for Kafeel never having to worry about a profession.

While still in school in the early 1970s Kafeel started to play cricket as a left arm spinner with the ambition from the start of getting into the national team. Jim Laker who had taken a record nineteen wickets in 1956 was his idol and for the sake of Pakistan Kafeel wanted to be the one to break this apparently unbeatable record. And so with a self painted portrait of Laker in front of him for inspiration he taught himself to spin bowl with the right arm "just like Laker". But he had the "added ability of being able to bowl with both arms and could have floored the finest batsmen with the great variety that could be offered in a single over".

The station of a true artist is at the top, therefore, Kafeel never wanted to play small time cricket: his one and only goal was the national team. He watched others play at the district and divisional level, occasionally bowling a few demonstration balls. That was all. But fortune passed him by; he was ignored by the selectors. The best playing years were wasted in the long wait and now he has given up the game because it does not become an artist like himself to play small time cricket. The man who could have turned the world on its head with his remarkable ability and won a great name for himself and country is heartbroken.

The dream of taking 20 wickets for Pakistan slowly began to recede into the distance and with it Kafeel started to lose sight of reality. At this point I asked him to demonstrate his bowling. He went home for his flannels while his colleagues told me that a team of Frenchmen arrived last summer with the request for him to paint some transport planes in France. Our man refused: whatever he will do will be for Pakistan not for some two bit country like France. His colleagues also said Kafeel had never physically touched money and is known never to have asked to be paid for his work. Shortly Kafeel arrived in his aging flannels that accentuated his spindly legs and took us to a nearby garden where he showed us his amazing ambidexterity. But since I cannot tell a googly from silly point or anything else I wasn't the best judge.

The desire to be well known was obsessive and since the selection committee for the national cricket team had passed him by he thought of another way of making himself famous, at least within the country. With his paints and brushes in a wickerwork basket he prowled the truck stands outside Ghotki which fortunately for our hero lies on the National Highway, the artery for all cross country lorries. When the truckers were not looking he moved quickly from vehicle to vehicle leaving a trail of the legend of the greatest spin bowler the world has never known.

One day the mad painter was caught in the act: short (1 m, 57 cm) and skinny (not more than 45 kg) our man was hauled in front of a jury of big, angry truckers. Not to be daunted he used his gift of the gab. He told them how their trucks would go faster if he were allowed to paint his message on them; they would consume less fuel and best of all they would look pretty. The men laughed; they thought he was crazy and Kafeel Bhai new he had made an inroad. From then on they did not mind him. Sometimes, however, there were truckers who had not heard of his fame and they got rough with him. But he was never beaten up, only pushed about a little bit. Other times he was allowed to write his message only after he had painted a typical truck scene or two on the vehicle. The fame that he had craved slowly came his way without media help: every single trucker in the country was acquainted with his name and was hauling it across the length and breadth of the land.

So is he satisfied now with the distinction he has earned? Of course, why else should "educated people like yourself come to sit at my feet? Only because I am famous and everybody wants to see me. I have defeated you and the rest of the world. I wanted to be well known and now the whole world knows the name of Kafeel Bhai." But now he does not play cricket anymore. Now he is just the artist who paints name plates and who has since the death of his brother given up painting his legend on cross country lorries.

In his heyday he would not "spare" any vehicle. Car, truck, tonga, donkey cart, bicycle. Sure enough, I was shown several donkey carts trundling about town with greetings to Kafeel Bhai. Once he was even forced by a group of outlaws to write his message on their Kalashnikovs. Some days later these men were done in in an encounter with the police who came looking for our man. His fame saved him any trouble that would surely have been the lot of a lesser mortal. "I did not even spare lotas and latrines." This was too good to be passed and so I was taken to a mosque where the latrine doors carried greetings to the greatest spin bowler of all times. Inside, the message was barely legible on the battered lotas.

Like Kafeel the cricketer who bowls with both arms, Kafeel the artist can write and paint with both hands and the script does not show any sign of awkwardness. He can write right side up and upside down or he can do a mirror image of Urdu or Sindhi script. He is good in his work yet he never asks for money. Why? "An artist is priceless and it is bad form to seek recompense for your talent. A truly great man never asks others for money." But Imran Khan who is building a hospital with donations is not a truly great man; he is great by accident. When one begs one becomes "third class". Great men do not beg. If people want to pay Kafeel for his labours he simply holds his pocket open and without touching the money takes it home to his mother.

We said our farewell in the crowded bazaar and he told me marriage for him was the last priority but before that he wanted to achieve the "height of fame". As I was leaving I asked if I could do something for him when I got home. But there was nothing to do anymore. "The time to do something for me is past." In the bazaar everybody seemed to know Kafeel Bhai. "Like rivers that fall into the great ocean they all come to me. But never the reverse will happen." Men, young and old, Hindu and Muslim, Sindhi, Punjabi and Mohajir came up to him and he greeted them one and all by kissing their hands. For the love that Kafeel has for his fellow humans there is no barrier of language, race or creed. As my tonga pulled away I saw him surrounded by a host of men and then he was lost in the milling crowd.

Salman Rashid is author of eight travel books including jhelum: City of the Vitasta and The Apricot Road to Yarkand

Pinion Shah - Profile

Porters are the backbone of most climbing expeditions, trekking and adventurous exploration into the mountains all over the world. The agile, tireless, hardworking people, primarily from local communities, ferry massive loads of gear on their backs. Like the more familiar Sherpa people of the Himalaya, the Pakistani porters are respected among fraternity of mountain lovers as some of the best porters in the world. They are dedicated and know where the crevasses and icefalls are, how to acclimatize, how much food and fuel to haul up the hill, when to push on, when to rest. They are unsung heroes of high-altitude mountaineering. Without their labour, many a base camps would never have been established; many a summit would never have been conquered.

I had lived some of my life in the base camps of majestic mountains in Northern Pakistan; with mountaineers, explorers and adventurers from all over the world and porters from Pakistan. During my to-ing and fro-ing in mountain areas, I have befriended many local porters. Some are still on my contact list but I have had the fortune to know Pinion Shah, best in his trade a little better.

Pinion Shah is sturdy and knows the mountains inside out. His forefathers migrated to Baltistan over six hundred years ago. Originally Buddhist, they along with other Balti people converted to Islam during the Moghul period in the sixteenth century. While some of the Baltis adapted to a trading economy, many are still largely pastoralists.

I first met Pinion Shah during my assignment as a facilitator with multinational climbing expedition to Nanga Parbat from Rupal side in 1993. That is when our friendship started by chance. I was to accompany the expedition only up to forward base camp. The hike to base camp and extended stay there brought every kind of weather imaginable -- scorching sun, blinding sandstorms, white-out blizzards.

Although I was not one of the climbers, the weather in the base camp left me physically emaciated and emotionally wasted. With great good fortune, on the way back, I was invited by Pinion Shah to his village, situated at the edge of the Rupal Valley, to recuperate. There I was nursed back to health with a combination of goat's milk, apricots and warm hospitality. I and Pinion Shah have always been in contact ever since.

While in the village, my eyes opened to the realities of the Balti way of life. Life there is hard, graceful and independent. Living conditions are harsh and devoid of modern day civic amenities we in urban centres take for granted. The Baltis live in isolated, remote valleys subsisting on pastoral grazing and marginal crops of barley and wheat. The climate is severe due to the high altitude. Villagers rely on their ingenuity to bring glacier melt water to their fields and homes. Medical care is almost nonexistent. Broken bones and burns often go untreated, and diseases due to malnutrition are a common fact of village life. Chronic infections often lead to blindness and deafness. Infant mortality rate under age one caused primarily by diarrhea-induced dehydration is alarmingly high. In winter, villagers crawl into tiny basement dugouts and spend months huddled together, barely kept warm by smoky fires.

Despite this abject poverty, I saw that the Baltis not only accept their destiny, but embrace the hardship as well as the beauty of their lives, keeping their humanity undimmed and even enhancing it. Facing an existence of privation and adversity, Pinion Shah and his family generously took in me and cared for like their own.

The traditional Balti ways of life are no doubt is about to change. Centuries old self-sustainable methodologies are being lost in the pursuit of the cash that expedition and trekking jobs bring. The inflow of money, material goods, and growing numbers of foreign travellers are impacting the Balti culture. In return for sharing their spectacular mountain surroundings with outsiders and for providing the strong back on which many expeditions reached their goals and many westerners realized their adventures, these Balti people deserve a decent future in which they have a voice.

Pinion Shah had nine years of schooling. He is familiar with oral English and is qualified in mountain hygiene and sanitation, first aid, and crevasse rescue. Pinion Shah told, “I leave villages for months at a time to seek elusive jobs as porters. I remain busy for the trekking season and earn enough to sustain our family through winters.”

“Serious mountaineering starts in the forward base camps,” narrated Pinion Shah, “I have seen climbers going back from the base camps even without attempting and team leader failing to pursue them to go ahead.” Though the travel to Pakistan has declined, but adventure travel has boomed in last few years. This year is being celebrated as a Golden Jubilee of conquering K 2 by an Italian expedition. “I am expecting more business in the areas this year,” he wrote me.

Pinion Shah is aging now. He was known to carry maximum load when he was young literally moving the mountains of luggage and equipment on the most difficult hikes. As a person, Pinion Shah always inspires me. He remains proud, happy and ready to share despite all their hardships. There is no fast lane in his life. He has no worries, alienation or fears. He is very contended with life and what ever comes his way.